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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Thanks to laziness, business and sickiness, I haven't posted in a while, so consider this a catch-up. Because I have a nice amount of stuff to cover, mainly from COMC and SportLots, I thought I'd just round up the rest of my eBay (plus one Blowout) purchases from the last month or so.

But first, since I went by it due to the UM Athletic Department's garage sale (which wasn't all that great this year) on Friday, here's a shot of Ray Fisher stadium, home of Michigan Baseball. Specifically I had a nice shot of the team's retired numbers on the left-centerfield wall:

You might recognize the names of players two through four, especially since I collect them!

Ok, so back to business. I had a fairly productive June and July, as my computer desk piled with cards to scan would attest. Today I have for you the fruits of seven purchases--six from eBay and one from Blowout. Here they are:

Mike Komisarek 2012-13 Panini Rookie Anthology Prizm auto

This card and the next one came as a package deal for $5 delivered on the Blowout forums. I had scanned several RA breaks with special interest due to the appearance of the next player in this set, and when a guy pulled that player AND this Komisarek auto, I knew I had to grab both. Surprisingly this is actually my first auto of him, and I only have one other hit of this hockey Mike, a dual jersey. Prizm's a pretty cool looking set, especially with a Refractor-kinda thing going on. That makes this card less of a throw-in, and more of one half of a win-win!

I might've said a bit about Hunwick around here, but just in case--he was Michigan's former walk-on who David Ecksteined his way to a storied hockey career that included a narrow OT loss in the NCAA final a couple years ago. He then joined Columbus as a free agent, bringing along his awesome UM mask and pads, one or both of which are featured on all of his cards I've seen. I grabbed the dual jersey/auto first in a small last-minute bidding war (but still a reasonable price) and from there knew I wanted to pursue his roughly 50-card PC. How can you pass up seeing college pads in the pros?!

The Elite card was part two of the Komisarek purchase, and that got me a bit of momentum to add more. Soon after, I found Shawn's Prizm Father's Day insert, which I believe is called a Pulsar, though it's not numbered and difficult to tell how those work; I haven't seen them listed on Beckett's checklists yet. Still, like Topps' Silver Slate cards I wanted to make sure I didn't miss out.

My 18th Scales card puts me just the Red Refractor (/5) short of his seven-card rainbow in this set. I won this on eBay recently for the opening bid and paid $3.49 delivered for my rarest Scales card to-date. I'm happy to see the orange came out nicely on the scan, and I can't wait to show off a purdy rainbow someday.

Jim Abbott 2012 Topps Archives Fan Favorites auto

This is my fifth Abbott hit, all of which are autographs. While I don't love everything Topps does, I do enjoy the Retired Signature/Archives/Fan Favorites autos, so I did my best to grab a copy of this one, which reprints his 1992 Topps card. I'm starting to amass a decent collection of his and would be happy to continue adding to it soon.

Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Printing Plates Cyan (1/1)

Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Printing Plates Magenta (1/1)

Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Printing Plates Yellow (1/1)

Why yes, those ARE three plates from the same set all at once. An eBay seller had listed these for months and months at unappealing BIN prices. When he finally gave in and lowered the price, enabling Best Offer as well, I nabbed these for $30, the price I was willing to pay all along. It's fun to have another shot at a four-plate set, so of course I'm keeping my eyes out for the Black, but I'm just happy to have my first one-of-one cards of Clayton, who unfortunately had to undergo surgery recently. These will happily reside in Clayton's PC, as well as my plate/1-1 collection along with...

Rich Hill 2007 Ultra Printing Plates Cyan (1/1)

Woohoo, another Rich Hill plate! I now have 11 one-of-ones of my favorite PC player, and this one only set me back $6.50, half of which was shipping. If I hadn't been so sick earlier this week I was going to post this card to celebrate Rich earning his first win (in relief) since May 26 of last year. Hey, middle relievers don't get too much press, so I'll take what I can get.

This is my 89th Hill hit and 204th PC card overall, not to mention my 25th plate/1-1 thanks to the Richard trio above. I had never seen plates from this set until now, so I don't know if/when I'll ever see the others, but I'm cool with whatever I find since 1/1s are just gravy for the collection as far as I'm concerned.

Not a bad few weeks, eh? I promise to be back soon with the aforementioned SportLots and COMC scores soon.